D. Van Skiver
If you’re a musician, you typically spend the hour before your set wishing these other guys would hurry up and finish, even if it’s a band you like. I mean, sure, they’re doing their thing, and you’d never take that away from them even if they suck, but come on, you’ve been waiting all week to play this show. As soon as their guitarist finishes showing off his spin kicks or his “fucking badass metal dude” moves, you can finally get your stuff heard.
Not so when the night’s billing includes Pete Yorko.
He was billed as a “one man band”, which conjured up unpleasant warnings in my mind. His setup consisted of two kick-pedal drums and an electric guitar. I thought to myself, “this could go one of two ways…”
It went the right way. Sure, the drums didn’t sound like John Bonham – how could they? But they weren’t all just boom-tap, boom-tap either. Yorko actually managed to make them interesting, while playing guitar, while singing, and, most impressive of all, while maintaining a good stage presence. And that was just what I noticed first…
His guitar playing took a while to announce itself to my brain. It was adequate, but about halfway through his set, I realized that this kid was better than that. He was GOOD. He didn’t show off, he didn’t play lead, but as someone who’s always appreciated rhythm over flash, his playing was exactly what I like to hear. And the way he played, I’d be willing to bet he’s capable of the flashy shit too.
Yorko can sing as well as anyone, but when the moment calls for it, his scream can put them all to shame. It’s a standard punk rock rule that at least 40% of all vocals must be yelled. All too often, though, singers take the easy way out by just trying to make it as sonically unpleasing as possible while counting on the theory that those “in the know” will get how artful it is. And while that may have been true the first 400 times, punk is 30 years old now, and the genre, along with its screaming, has been butchered by about 20 years worth of bad bands. The reality is that a good screamer is able to do it within the context of the song, not outside of it. He doesn’t distract from the music or cover it up; he enhances it. Yorko gets this, fully understands it, and delivers it flawlessly.
So what does he sound like? More good news for me… his influences are the same ones that made Uncle Tupelo and The Reverend Horton Heat what they are, but Yorko mixes this with the raw energy and loud, open chords of the early days of punk. He covers both Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams, but there is none of the laughter that one usually hears from a punk crowd when the band performs their token “cross-genre cover song”. Yorko conveys an honesty about him that tells you instantly that he’s covering these songs because he understands their connection to the “DIY” ethics of punk, because he disregards the genre-labels that so many fans use as a crutch, and most importantly, because he loves these songs.
He finished and we took the stage, but if he'd wanted another half-hour, I'd have gladly waited.
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